Ariel Ekblaw

I went through a really tough situation with my mom.

She got really sick a few years ago.

She has since recovered.

That period of taking care of her was incredibly intense.

It happened to overlap with the pandemic.

But the sense of fulfillment and mattering that I had and she had in that time feels actually so much more profound sometimes than even my day-to-day work.

And I love my day-to-day work.

I love working on space explorations.

But I basically don't want to have the regret in 10 years of having focused so solely on an aspirational ambition that I didn't do the things, the very human things that just help you feel fulfilled and grounded, like taking care of your family, being there when someone really, really needs you.

And it was another wonderful conversation that Ted that was just such a

crystallization of that's how you avoid regret is don't get so caught up in your own excitement, which can be a good thing, that you forget some of the really fundamental like basic human needs around fulfillment and taking care of others and being needed.

I once had a professor ask me, why in the world do we spend so much money on space exploration in the face of so many pressing challenges here on Earth?

It's a good question, and a tough one for me.

Should we be building a future life in space?

I want to argue yes and tell you how.

I do believe in the beauty of space exploration for the sake of new knowledge, because the little that we do know about our universe pales in comparison to what we do not yet know.

and in some ways, it's in my blood.

My parents are both pilots, my dad was an A-10 fighter pilot, and my mom was one of the first women to ever fly for the United States Air Force.

And 14 years ago, I floated in microgravity like an astronaut for the first time.

This inspired me to work in aerospace for the rest of my life.